


distant

by Rehearsal_Dweller



Series: For Even a Day [10]
Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: M/M, Royalty AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:27:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29698458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rehearsal_Dweller/pseuds/Rehearsal_Dweller
Summary: They are nineteen, and this morning Jack realized something awful.He is absolutely for real in love with Davey Jacobs.
Relationships: David Jacobs/Jack Kelly
Series: For Even a Day [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1705639
Comments: 14
Kudos: 37





	distant

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and welcome to my 75th Newsies fic. I'm not entirely sure how we got here.  
> This wasn't the fic I was planning for 75, but the concept hit me last night and it's the first thing I've been able to finish in ages, so this is what we've got. Enjoy some soft, sad royal!Javey.

Jack hates to sleep alone.

His bed is gigantic for no good reason, all fluff and comforters and pillows and he’s never quite enough person to warm it all the way up. If he falls asleep in the middle, finding his way to the side if he needs to get up in the night is a hassle and a half, if he falls asleep on the edge he inevitably just rolls into the middle. It’s too much bed for one person by far.

Davey first stayed the night with him when they were thirteen or so. They’d been talking on one of Jack’s couches and before they knew it it was late, late, late, and Davey was dozing off curled up around a pillow. Jack had scooped him up – a little awkwardly – and carried him back to his bed, unwilling to try to carry him any further and even less willing to wake him.

They’d rolled toward each other in the night, anchored in the vast sea of pillows. It was the first time Jack felt like he wasn’t being swallowed alive by his mattress. He’d decided then and there he liked sleeping with Davey very much.

It wasn’t till a few years later that Jack decided he liked _sleeping with_ _Davey_ very much, too.

They are nineteen – somewhat freshly so, on Jack’s part – and this morning Jack realized something awful.

He is absolutely for real in love with Davey Jacobs.

That knowledge has settled in his chest like a weight. He supposes, absently, that he has loved Davey for a long time, and the untethered ache that sometimes settles over him when Davey smiles just so or when he laughs or when he gets that fussy crinkle between his eyebrows has probably always been _this_. He loves Davey Jacobs.

It’s everything.

It’s –

Nothing.

It doesn’t matter one fraction of a bit that Jack loves Davey. It doesn’t _matter_. It can’t matter, because he is the crown prince and Davey is the firstborn son of the most powerful non-royal family in the kingdom and they have bigger things to worry about. They have responsibilities and duties and Jack loves Davey but Jack will marry Princess Katherine Pulitzer in two years and Davey will find some other, inoffensive but appropriately connected person to marry and it doesn’t _matter_.

Jack is in his giant, stupid bed, inches away from the boy he’s in love with –

He reaches for Davey, blindly, uncertain of exactly where in the dark the other boy is resting, tangled in blankets and not even barely brushing against Jack, though Jack can feel the weight of his sleeping body on the mattress and he knows that he is still there. Davey is on his back next to Jack, but when Jack’s hand finds him, grazing across his bare stomach, Davey turns onto his side away from Jack.

\- but he might as well be a mile away.

It’s so easy to lose each other in a bed this large.

Jack feels an awful lot like he can’t breathe. He sits up, sliding closer to the edge of the bed and letting his legs dangle off of the side. He braces himself on his hands, gripping the corner of the mattress like his life depends on it.

It isn’t fair.

Jack has a lot of things pretty good in his life – a _lot_ of things pretty good, all told. He’s a prince, of course he does.

But at the same time, there is just so _fucking much_ that’s completely out of his control. Pieces of his world that were clicked into place long before he was old enough to have an opinion on them, before he even existed.

He loves Kitty, but it’s more like –

It’s more like –

Kitty is one of the best friends he’s ever had – one of the only close friends he’s ever had who isn’t related to him – and he loves her dearly, but it’s not like _this_. He feels differently about Kitty than he does about, say, his brothers, but it’s more affection and fondness than romance. It is, Jack supposes, exactly how he’d have described how he feels about Davey before this morning.

He would’ve been wrong, but he’d have said it.

“Jackie?” Davey’s sleepy voice says from behind him. “Where’ja go?”

“I’m here, love,” Jack replies without turning. “Go back to sleep.”

“You took the blankets n’now m’cold,” says Davey. Jack feels Davey’s fingers brush against his back, sending a shiver up his spine. “Come back.”

“Davey,” Jack says. It comes out a little shaky.

He hears Davey sit up, feels the mattress shift as he slides a little bit closer to Jack. One hand just ghosts over his shoulder, not quite touching.

“Are you alright?” Davey says softly.

“Go back to sleep, Davey,” Jack repeats.

“Jack,” says Davey. He rests his chin on Jack’s shoulder, the side of his face pressing against Jack’s cheek.

Jack flinches away.

“Oh.” Davey pulls back, drawing his knees up to his chest. Jack can see him in his periphery, but he's afraid to turn and fully face him.

“I’m sorry,” says Jack. “I’m just – I’m sorry.”

“Oh,” Davey says again. “Jack, about earlier –“

“Please don’t,” says Jack. “Whatever it is, please don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Davey continues anyway. “We don’t have to – I mean. We can pretend it never happened.”

He slides back over toward the center of the bed.

“I don’t _want_ to pretend it never happened,” says Jack. “I want it to matter that I – I want it to matter.”

“Nobody said it didn’t matter, Jackie-mine,” says Davey.

“We don’t have to _say_ it, do we?” Jack replies, bitter. “It just is. Nothing we want matters.”

“Jack,” Davey says, his voice soft and sad. “That isn’t true.”

“Isn’t it?” Jack finally turns, twisting at the waist to face Davey with his legs still mostly hanging off of the bed.

Davey is back on his side of the mattress, and he feels an ocean away.

“Davey, I love you,” Jack says. His eyes are adjusted to the darkness now, but he doesn’t need to see to know that Davey flinches away from the words. “I love you and I just have to live with that, even while we grow up and we get married and we live our separate lives, and I just – you can’t tell me that it matters what I feel, Davey. You can’t.”

Davey doesn’t say anything, just takes a shaky breath that might actually be a sob.

“And the worst part is that you know it, too,” says Jack. “That you feel it too.”

“I know, Jack,” Davey says, barely audible.

“I wish we could –“

“No, you don’t,” Davey cuts in. “Don’t even say it.”

“No,” Jack agrees, deflating. “I don’t.”

“Come here,” says Davey. He reaches for Jack again, this time catching him by the wrist. He tugs him closer and Jack, helpless, complies.

He lets Davey arrange him under the blankets, lets him decide how their limbs will overlap and where to rest his head.

“I know it hurts,” Davey says, soft and sleepy. “I _know_. But it does matter, I think. At least to us, right?”

“Yeah,” says Jack. He sighs. “I’m sorry for waking you.”

“Don’t be,” says Davey. He shifts up a little bit, pressing a soft kiss just under Jack’s jaw. “Good night.”

“Good night.” He doesn’t say _I love you_ again.

It takes Jack a long time to fall asleep, even after he feels Davey’s breathing fall back into the slow, steady rhythm of sleep. He stares up at the canopy above them, the weight of Davey’s body grounding him, and he waits.

When he awakes, early morning sunlight creeping in through the curtains, Davey has rolled to the other side of the bed and taken most of the blankets with him.

Jack hates to sleep alone, but sometimes this isn’t much better.

They prepare for the day side-by-side in silence. They don’t talk about their midnight conversation again.


End file.
